Palazzo Branciforte
The Palazzo Branciforte , also called "Raccuja" (after the county of the builders), "Pietraperzia" or "Butera", is a palace in Palermo . It is located on Via Bara dell'Olivella in the historic center of Palermo. The building was built by the Branciforte family in the late 16th century. In 2005 the Fondazione Sicilia Foundation (formerly the Banco di Sicilia Foundation) bought the building. It has been the seat of the foundation since 2012. The offices and parts of the Foundation's collection are housed in an area of 5650 square meters. The Palazzo Branciforte has been open to the public since May 23, 2012.
history
Probably the Count of Raccuja, Nicolò Placido Branciforte Lanza, had the palazzo built at the end of the 16th century as a noble house next to the city walls and near the sea. At the beginning of the 17th century, Giuseppe Branciforte, Prince of Pietraperzia, bought the building. In 1701 Ercole Branciforte and Gravina married Caterina Branciforte and Ventimiglia, universal heiress of don Nicolò Placido, Prince of Butera. The couple received the palazzo in the kalsa as their residence . After the Branciforte family received permission from the city's Senate to build a road, they built an annex between the end of the 17th century and the 1730s according to plans by Giacomo Amato and Ferdinando Fuga, which they connected to the palace with bridges . They also had the old residence expanded in a representative way. With it, the size of the palazzo doubled. This made the old building one of the largest and most magnificent aristocratic residences in the city. A fire in 1759 destroyed large parts of the building. The subsequent reconstruction under the architects and engineers Paolo Vivaldi, Salvatore Attinelli, Carlo Chenchi and Pietro Trombetta took almost 50 years.
At the beginning of the 19th century, Palermo was in a serious economic crisis. Large parts of the population became impoverished. In 1801 the city government asked the Branciforte family to lease the entire building to the Senate of Palermo. The city wanted the building to set up a pawn shop called “Monte della Pietà per la Pignorazione”. At that time, this required more space to store the growing number of pledged objects. The Branciforte family has since resided in a palazzo on Piazza Marina .
The Senate had the building converted for its new purpose in the following period. The balconies were torn down, many windows walled up and others secured with iron bars. Then the pawn shop moved into the premises. From then on, the local population referred to the former aristocratic residence as an old clothing store . During the uprising against the Bourbons in 1848, a cannonball fire severely damaged the building. Among other things, the floors inside partially collapsed. During the subsequent restoration, they were not pulled back into the building, so that the areas on the second and third floors of the building were integrated into one high room. There the owners left wooden shelves, ladders and small platforms were built in to store pledged objects.
In 1929, the Central Savings Bank Vittorio Emanuele per le Province Siciliane took over the pawn shop. During the Second World War, the structure was damaged several times in the bombing raids. The Branciforte building was used for pledging poor-quality pledged goods until the early 1980s, when it became the seat of the Fondazione Chiazzese , the archive and the library of the Sparkasse.
At the end of the 1990s, the Banco di Sicilia took over the Sparkasse Vittorio Emanuele per le Province Siciliane . From then on, a training center for bank employees was housed in Palazzo Branciforte. He retained this position after the incorporation of Banco di Sicilia into the Capitalia Group.
On December 30, 2005, the Banco di Sicilia Foundation bought Palazzo Branciforte and Villa Zito for around six million euros. The foundation then invested around 18 million euros in restoring the building. In 2008, the restoration work began according to plans by architect Gae Aulenti . During the work, the road between the two parts of the building, which had been damaged by several bombing attacks, the two entrances, the stable, some of the Branciforte's representative rooms and the gardens were restored.
In 2012 the palazzo was reopened as a cultural center. The inauguration took place in the presence of the then Italian President Giorgio Napolitano . The opening date was deliberately set to May 23 on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the mafia attack on judge Giovanni Falcone . At the opening, the museum showed a photo exhibition by the Italian news and press agency Agenzia Nazionale Stampa Associata (ANSA) about Falcone and about the judge Paolo Borsellino, who was also killed in a mafia attack .
The building
The Palazzo Branciforte is a noble house from the end of the 16th century. It consists of two parts of the building that are separated by a street and connected by corridors and bridges. It covers an area of 5650 square meters. This makes it one of the largest aristocratic residences in the city. Access is via one of the two entrances on Via Butera to the entrance hall and from there to the monumental large staircase with a central staircase, which is decorated with red marble stairs and columns.
The archaeological collection and the historical majolica collection are located in the rooms of the so-called Cavallerizza (riding school) on the ground floor . The Gambero Rosso cooking school for professionals and amateurs as well as a restaurant named after the Palazzo, which specializes in traditional Mediterranean dishes, are also located on the ground floor .
The former state rooms were in the piano nobile . It was built at the height of the city wall at that time and thus enabled a wide view. You start with the entrance gallery, the ceiling of which is decorated with frescoes attributed to Gioacchino Martorana (1735–1779) and the quadraturists Gaspare and Giuseppe Cavarretta and Benedetto Cotardi. They show illusionistic architectural motifs, whereby in the case of the gallery Engel and Putten hold the Branciforte coat of arms. In the following rooms, too, illusionistic architectural motifs predominate. The walls are paneled. Above it are large canvases with family portraits and above the doors depictions of the possessions of the Princes of Butera. The vault of the last room is decorated with rocaille stucco and covered with putti. There are also portraits of Prince Salvatore Branciforte and his wife Maria Anna Pignatelli Aragona in the room. The galleries are decorated with paintings from the 18th century, which clearly show Arabic and Chinese influences. The original majolica flooring from a Palermitan manufacturer from the second half of the 18th century is only preserved in the first room. Some rooms on the second floor are frescoed with allegorical figures symbolizing the planets: Mercury and Venus, Jupiter and Mars, Sun and Saturn.
The stamp, coin and sculpture collections as well as the historical library with more than 50,000 books from the collection of the Fondazione Sicilia are located on the first floor. The storage rooms of the former pawn shop Monte di Santa Rosalia can be reached from the first floor . The striking wooden construction that the pawn shop had built in at the end of the 18th century to store the so-called “base” goods was preserved there . They are among the most valuable parts of the building .
The Auditorium Branciforte is used for conferences, meetings and cultural events. Eight significant wall paintings from the 17th century can be seen in the rooms in front of the auditorium. They are the work of the artist Gaspard Dughet and show biblical scenes with Jacob, David and the destruction of Sodom. The library is housed in a three-story reading room, the ceiling of which shows a fresco made by Ignazio Moncada di Paternò (* 1932 in Palermo, † 2012 in Milan).
museum
On the ground floor, the Foundation shows permanent loans from the Soprintendenza per i Beni Archeologici , archaeological finds (mostly grave goods) from archaeological excavations in Selinunte , Terravecchia di Cuti , Himera and Solunt , the purchase of which was financed by the Banco di Sicilia, as well as acquisitions from private individuals and antique markets. The collection, comprising 4,751 objects, consists of ceramics of various types from different epochs (prehistoric and early historical, Greek, Sican , objects from the Magna Graecia period and local finds from the Archaic, Classical and Hellenistic periods), as well as architectural and religious motifs Terracottas, bronzes, jewelry, glassware and ivory. From Roman times there is a double-faced herma and an amphora for the transport of wine that was recovered from the sea.
The most important exhibits of the majolica collection of the Fondazione Sicilia are works of the 17th and 18th centuries, including very rare pieces from Sicily and masterpieces from other parts of Italy (Faenza, Urbino, Venice and Rome), from Europe and the East (China, Iran, Turkey), which were made between the 15th and 18th centuries.
The stamp collection includes rare postage stamps. These include the first postage stamps that were issued by the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies in 1858 and on January 1, 1859 in the Kingdom of Sicily.
The Foundation presents its fund of more than 1000 coins in the Münzkabinett. It shows six centuries of coin production in the mints of Sicily from 1282 (beginning of the Aragonese period, after the Sicilian Vespers) to 1836, the year in which Ferdinand II approved the last minting of coins in Palermo. It claims to be the only complete collection of medieval and modern Sicilian coins that is open to the public in Italy. In addition, the collection also contains some bronze weights.
The sculpture collection includes 55 objects from the 19th and 20th centuries. They are also shown on the first floor. There are bronzes by Antonio Ugo , Giacomo Manzù , Costantino Barbella, Vincenzo Bentivegna, Tommaso Bertolino, Pasquale and Benedetto Civiletti , Ettore Cumbo, Jaroslav Horejc, Edouard Drouot , Giacomo della Giustina, Filippo Sgarlata, Benedetto De Lisi De Lisi , Domenico Lucio Fontana , Vincenzo Gemito, Nino Geraci, Filippo Silvestro Giulianotti, Emilio Greco , Salvatore Profeta, Domenico Abate Cristalli, Guido Righetti, Benedetto D'Amore and Igor Mitoraj .
The Foundation's library holds more than 50,000 books, including works on Sicilian history, art history, numismatics and archeology of Sicily. The library's historical holdings include many publications that were printed between 1501 and 1830. In addition to its own holdings, the library holds important book holdings as deposits. The largest single item here is the 8000 works comprehensive library of lawyers and politician Francesco "Franco" Restivo , both President of the Autonomous Region of Sicily as well as indoor and Defense Minister of Italy , and from 1958 until his death in 1976, a member of the Chamber of Deputies ( Camera dei deputati ) was . Another permanent loan is the private library of the architect Giuseppe Spatrisano with around 2000 volumes as well as drafts and models made by him. In addition, the library stores holdings from the libraries of the Banco di Sicilia, the Cassa di Risparmio Vittorio Emanuele per le Province Siciliane and the '' Lauro Chiazzese '' foundation for art and culture, some of which are kept in the foundation's Villa Zito and which are by agreement are available in the reading room. Of great importance is the collection of maps of Sicily, which shows the historical development of cartography from the 16th to the 18th centuries.
In the storerooms of the former Monte di Santa Rosalia pawn shop , the Foundation is showing the 109 objects collection of Sicilian puppets Collezione Giacomo Cuticchio Pupi Siciliani as a permanent exhibition , which the Cuticchio family made available to them on permanent loan. In addition, the rooms are used for temporary art exhibitions.
The Foundation
The Fondazione Banco di Sicilia (today Fondazione Sicilia) was spun off from the Banco di Sicilia on December 21, 1991. The bank transferred all art and cultural assets in its possession to the Foundation, including the valuable collections of the Museum of the Mormino Foundation. Since May 23, 2012, the Banco di Sicilia Foundation has been operating under the name Fondazione Sicilia. Its primary goal is to promote the island's culture and support initiatives that are active in education, training, preservation and promotion of the artistic and cultural heritage, scientific research, but also in the fields of theater, art and literature.
It has been based in Palazzo Branciforte since 2012, which it acquired in 2005 with Villa Zito. The fund is kept in the two buildings owned by the foundation. The archaeological, numismatic and philatelic collections as well as sculptures and frescoes are shown in the Palazzo Branciforte. The Fondazione Sicilia painting gallery, located in Villa Zito, consists of more than three hundred works ranging from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries. originated. The foundation's holdings include works by Mattia Presti and Salvator Rosa through to nineteenth-century Sicilian landscape painters such as Francesco Lojacono , Antonino Leto , Michele Catti and others. The extensive collection of magazines from the Banco di Sicilia belonging to the Foundation is also kept in the Villa Zito.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d (Fonte Ansa / Simona Licandro): Riapre Palazzo Branciforte: restauro firmato Gae Aulenti. Retrieved November 20, 2019 (Italian).
- ↑ a b c d e f g Palace. In: Palazzo Branciforte. Retrieved November 20, 2019 (UK English).
- ↑ a b c Palermo: riapre Palazzo Branciforte, polo culturale tra storia e tradizione (2) | Palermo la Repubblica.it. Retrieved November 20, 2019 .
- ↑ a b c d e f g h Exhibition itinerary. In: Palazzo Branciforte. Retrieved November 20, 2019 (UK English).
- ↑ a b Library. In: Palazzo Branciforte. Retrieved November 20, 2019 (UK English).
- ↑ Le collezioni - Il patrimonio. Retrieved November 20, 2019 (Italian).
- ↑ Storia. Retrieved November 20, 2019 (Italian).
- ↑ Biblioteca - Il patrimonio. Retrieved November 20, 2019 (Italian).
Coordinates: 38 ° 7 ′ 16.8 ″ N , 13 ° 21 ′ 44.3 ″ E